Even if her claims lack any basis -- and if that makes it irresponsible for her to have made them -- they were taken seriously by enough people that she succeeded in forcing the removal of a provision in a piece of legislation in which the President and the congressional leadership were invested. Her actions further alienated those who already dislike her but the effect of her involvement can't be simply brushed aside; apparently many people take her quite seriously. At least within the confines of the Republican Party, and specifically in its hard-core constituency, she has clearly proven herself a force to be reckoned with: thus, a plus in terms of her political viability.

We ought not to be crediting Sarah Palin with any defeat of the type of health care reform programs being advocated by Democrats. The people we may end up crediting for the defeat of these health care reform programs--assuming that the programs do fail--are Democrats.

Not to forget: Democrats have filibuster-proof votes in the Senate. They have a huge majority in the House. A Democrat is President. Republicans are utterly and completely marginalized in the political calculus. The problem the Democrats have in passing health care reform has nothing to do with the supposedly titanic stature of Sarah Palin in the debate. Nor does it have to do with the town hall protests, eye-catching, and media-grabbing though those protests are. It has to do with the fact that Blue Dog Democrats, concerned with the costs associated with health care, concerned with the repeated negative budget scores by the Congressional Budget Office of the various health care reform plans, and concerned with the fact that the Obama Administration has repeatedly, and deliberately misled by understating the costs of health care reform, have created an alliance with Republicans to oppose the various pieces of legislation currently being considered on fiscal grounds. If this alliance had not existed, if the Blue Dogs were amenable to health care reform a month or so back, we may have seen Congress meet Barack Obama's demand that health care legislation be passed by August and presented to him for his signature.

Of course, if health care reform does fail, the Democrats will hit the campaign trail and tell us that we need to elect more Democrats to Congress in order to pass a health care bill in the next go-round, whenever that turns out to be. But this would be an absurd claim; to elect even more Democrats, Republicans from exceedingly red districts and states would have to be ousted, and the only way they would be ousted is by even more conservative, Blue Dog Democrats--the kind who would likely evince the same kinds of concerns regarding Democratic health care reform plans that the current batch of Blue Dogs are evincing. Needless to say, this would do nothing to overcome the various legislative obstacles that block Democrats from passing health care legislation.

It is interesting that the Democratic knock on Sarah Palin is that (a) she is immensely stupid; and (b) she is smart enough to foil a completely Democratic Congress and a Democratic White House when it comes to the fight over health care reform. The truth is more complicated than that. Sarah Palin attracts a lot of attention in the media, but attention does not necessarily translate into power or heft. The Democrats' problems in the health care reform fight are entirely of their own making, and entirely outside of Sarah Palin's control. Her departure from the fight would not make a bit of difference concerning the nature of the struggle over the future of health care policy.

Pejman, I'm delighted to be wholly in agreement with you today. At least on the political analysis. I agree with you: Lost in all the sturm und drang over Governor Palin's remarks, birthers, and town hall face-offs are those decisive Democratic majorities in Congress and the fact that bills are proceeding steadily through their drama-less committees and that those bills are remarkably similar in both chambers. The former Alaska governor's role in the debate now--today, at least--is more akin to that of Rush Limbaugh's influence on the national debate than, say, Senator Grassley's. Though I suspect not one Republican in Congress, with the exception of the exceptionally moderate senators from the state of Maine, will vote for any health care reform legislation this year or next. So, yes, Democrats being...you know, Democrats...could fumble this. Which I know would not displease you. And yet. The bills have been steadily moving forward. While the media promote a debate about end of life decisions in health care, Congress remains focused on cost and future savings.

These are two very different subjects. In the meantime, Democrats in Congress are closer to passing major system-wide health care reform.

They are closer to that goal than at any other time since the Johnson Administration took up health care reform for the elderly and the indigent.

"Congress remains focused on cost and future savings"?? David, come on. You cannot be serious. CBO estimates the House health care reform bill would increase budget deficits by $239 billion over the next ten years. CBO also says the House bill will produce increasing deficits beyond 2019 because the new entitlement spending would increase faster than 8% annually, while the spending and revenue offsets would grow only about 5% annually. Assuming a discount rate of 5.7 percent per year, the House bill would add more than $10 trillion over seventy-five years in new unfunded government obligations.

In addition to deeply damaging her party and her cause, Sarah Palin is mortgaging her future in politics with her unconscionable role in this "death panel" rhetoric. As with all policies, there's plenty of room for debate... and even sharp fact-based debate when it comes to pressing issues like health insurance reform. But the ghastly manner in which Sarah Palin has insisted that her son with Down syndrome would "have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel'" to gain health care -- facts be damned -- will profoundly turn off the clear majority of this country, even if the adamant fringe is roused out of their seats by such rhetoric.

The time for meaningful health insurance reform in America has come. When Americans voted in November, they voted both for policy-based change such as health insurance reform and quality-of-debate change -- away from exactly what Sarah Palin is invoking with her wild "death panel" dark fiction. Rhetoric like hers will backfire dramatically, and in her case, it will significantly hurt her politically going forward -- even if it buys her added strength in the relatively tiny pockets of staunchly conservative supporters who are already in her camp.

Call it a win-win. She's helping her own political future -- while advancing liberals' efforts at health care reform.

In appealing to a conservative base that seems uninterested in... well... facts, Palin has been pitch perfect. But she's also helping to define the opposition to reform as out-of-the-mainstream, and that's good for those who want reform.

There are two scenarios here, both of which lead to health care reform in the next few years. One is: the attacks from the Palinites are counter-productive broadly (while helping her narrow political interests) and give more momentum to this year's bill. The second is: the Palinite attacks actually end up creating enough anxiety in the public and politicians that this year's health reform legislation blows up.

In that second case, the pressure for health care reform will only increase. The number of uninsured will soar. The costs of health care will rise. Within a few years, the pressure will build for the kind of government-run health system the Palinites say they're against.

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would wonder if the folks at the town halls are secret agents of liberal advocates of a single payer system. They couldn't be more effective in pushing the country -- in the long term -- in the direction of single payer.

I find it curious that Ms. Palin’s recent pronouncements have been handed down via Facebook and Twitter (the modern equivalent of stone tablets) and not on camera or in person. This choice of venues raises a variety of problems: First, Palin need not be accountable for anything she says, because her opinions exist in a vacuum, divorced from any intellectual give-and-take. It is far simpler to make outrageous claims at a distance than in an interactive context that requires their defense. Second, musings posted on Facebook and Twitter can easily be ghost-written – how can we ascertain that these are Palin’s own words, or even the product of her own thoughts? The news media, in their zeal for all things Palin, have essentially reduced themselves to serving as the governor’s stenographer, breathlessly passing along anything that appears under her byline as though it automatically merits serious consideration.

Although I cannot assess whether she is helping or hurting her political future, this much is certain: Sarah Palin shows a keen understanding of the institutional weaknesses of the press in the internet age.

"An expression like 'death panels' ...unites no groups that don't already agree with each other."

Governor Palin's political future begins and ends among the party faithful in the snows of Iowa and New Hampshire circa 2011-2012. For now, Governor Palin leads the angry wing of the Republican party, the ones riding herd at the town halls this summer (no, re Cesar Conda, not "town halls," let's call them "red-in-the-face hate fests.") As far as the term "death panels" goes, evangelical voters in the Republican party in Iowa could be quite attracted to the "death" portion of it, while anti-government and anti-taxation voters in the Republican party in New Hampshire could be more attracted to the "panels" portion. An expression like "death panels" builds nothing, constructs nothing, and unites no groups that don't already agree with each other. But it is good political shorthand.

Sarah Palin is quickly becoming the George Wallace of the GOP. Like Wallace, she is a charismatic performer who has and will likely retain a sizeable following of people who see her as a "fighter" for what they believe in. In fact,as with Wallace, she will keep persuading them to understand and talk about most issues the way she does -- which is one measure of political influence. But it's hard to see how she converts this image into one which could win her votes from other constituencies. As with Wallace, she will probably always be limited by the first impression of her in the minds of most Americans outside her home state. Her demagogic, inaccurate comments on "the death panel" only confirm that.

Professor Kazin, I'm glad you chose to use the terms "demogogic" and "inaccurate" as opposed to "false" to describe Palin's comments, though I would hugely disagree with your characterization of her as a George Wallace, which I would in turn characterize as a gratuitous smear for the amusement of Beltway liberati. Whether the Senate dropped the offending panel provision or not, there is no getting around the fact that a government official will be deciding what gets paid for and what does not within the confines of a federal budget line item, enterprise fund or not. Medicare is nearly at that point, obscured only by federal trust fund complexity. It is demonstrably better to have such decision made by one of 1,400 competing private providers rather than a tax-subsidized behemoth that its most ardent supporters believe is only the first step toward hegemony.

Palin's death panel claim is an absurd exaggeration of a kernel of truth, which is that under a public option a government panel will craft guidelines on what care is appropriate under what circumstances, including the costly end-of-life years. "Appropriate" means, of course, what will be paid for and what will not, and what's the point of guidelines if they are not enforced? This is a long, long way from euthanasia, but it nicely highlights the fact that someone with a government ID will be trying to fit all that public option health care demand into a fixed budget. Such is the experience of state-run programs like Tennessee and North Carolina, almost all of which shattered through their initial costs projections, requiring huge taxpayer bailouts and/or major service cuts. By reminding us of this fundamental flaw in both the House plans and the argument for public over private insurance, the former governor's hyperbole may be doing us all a big favor.

She is helping Pres. Obama. When you go over the top as she has you bring around people who are in the middle. Her own Senior Senator of Alaska, a Republican, has denounced her words and her.

As far as personality she has probably helped herself in the short run with the base of her party and the radio/cable talking heads. It will be a short lived help, because the issues change and the talking heads will find new heroes.

Sarah Palin is helping her political future by engaging the discussion of the end of life issue. Her constituency is deeply concerned and she can only enhance her support on the right of the Republican Party. She has no other constituency to please. Her supporters will insure the financial success of her writings and speeches. If she runs for President they can give her the nomination which only takes about 25% of the vote in the first two primaries.

Sarah Palin is not engaged in a rational debate over the fine points of health care. She is a class warrior, trying to position herself as the Joan of Arc of the Jacksonian populist rebellion against liberal, bureaucratic elites. So far, her extraordinary political career (extraordinary in both its ups and its downs) seems to show two things. First, she's clearly right that there's a vast, volcanic energy of frustrated Jacksonian populism out there -- and the national disenchantment with George Bush did not lead to a disenchantment with Andrew Jackson. Second, it's also clear that she's a flawed messenger: that so far at least she lacks the discipline and the gravitas to make the transition from agitator to statesperson. Andrew Jackson himself was much more than the voice of populist protest: as a military leader he had led American forces to major victories against both Indian and British opponents. Palin's current tactics keep her in the news but make it less likely that she can ever emerge as anything more than a charismatic stump speaker or, perhaps, a media personality chez Fox. If this is a less glowing future than ex-Governor Palin sees in her dreams, it is infinitely more enticing than anything she could have reasonably envisioned before John McCain plucked her from obscurity. As defeated vice-presidential candidates go, she's had a good run.

Ex-Gov. Palin must be ecstatic to see herself matched in the media against President Obama when she should have no expectation of being quoted at all, much less from her Facebook page. As an example, we would all agree that it would be ludicrous for ESPN to hire someone who hacks around the municipal golf course to do the on-air critique of Tiger Woods’ club selection during the PGA championship. So why is it newsworthy to report what Mrs. Palin has to say on the health-care reform issue, one in which she clearly plays no role in either its development or its execution?

Sarah Palin has nothing to lose and everything to gain here. She weighs in on a politically volatile issue that concerns a great many Americans, and in doing so engages in a serious domestic policy debate and keeps her profile high, on her own terms, and for all the right reasons -- divorce rumors, teen pregnancy and absurd ethics investigations not among them.

What's fascinating here is her inarguable level of influence, especially considering just how irrelevant the liberal press likes to insist she is. She mentions "death panels" and suddenly the president is pushed to defend and explain the issue at his nationally televised Portsmouth town hall. Then, she writes a short note on Facebook responding to him, and the Senate Finance Committee (just a day later) drops the provision from its bill.

President Obama had that kind of influence, before his overexposure depreciated his ability to persuade the American public, Congress, the AARP, and various other lobbying groups, and before his administration took to the bizarre tactic of insulting the citizenry.

It's clear that the Obama White House, at least where this health care disaster is concerned, would love to be as "irrelevant" as Sarah Palin is right now.

The best politicians use words and language, which sometimes may not be technically accurate, but nonetheless frame policy issues in a politically powerful way to the public. Think of "death tax" instead of estate tax, "partial birth abortion" instead of intact dilation and extraction, "invest" instead of spend, and "pro-choice" instead of pro-abortion. President Obama is the master at this; calling enhanced interrogation techniques "torture" comes to mind.

Gov. Palin's use of the term "death panels" instead of end-of-life counseling sessions was harshly criticized as dishonest fear-mongering by Democrats and even some Republicans, but it worked: The Senate Finance Committee recently dropped the controversial end-of-life care provisions from its version of the health care reform bill.

Palin has obviously given up on the idea of a political future as an elected official. She can still wield political power as a "leader" in the Republican Party. The problem is that as she solidifies her position as the go-to call for the permanently paranoid right, she drags down the Republican Party. The more the party becomes the party of irrationality and ignorance, the more it becomes unlikely that a majority of the American people will trust Republicans with the reins of governance. Right now the base feels great. But feeling powerful and being powerful are two different things. Palin is leading the "feelings" wing of the party into political exile.

Sarah palin has become a cartoon character of herself. Like Limbaugh, she must be controversial to make news. The fact is that the news media is obsessed with her and they are the ones who give her “life”. They hang on her every word. Does Palin have a vote on health care? No. Does she have a constituency to fight for anymore? No. So, what is the attraction? Her ability to be outrageous. We should be focused on those leaders who will actually have an impact on health care. The long and short of it is this, the Republicans are irrelevant. If the Democrats could get their act together, they could pass whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted and Republicans would be powerless to stop it. The Democrats are in such disarray that they are the ones who will prevent the President from accomplishing his goals. God bless them.

What debate over end-of-life care? The Obama health care reform agenda has never been about end-of-life care. End-of-life care is not part of the health care financing reform that is at the heart of the legislation. The House bill simply included a section in the back 800 pages providing Medicare funding to allow patients to discuss voluntarily and privately with their doctors what kind of care they may want at the end of life. The bill explicitly recognizes that some patients will want everything done to prolong life to the last minute, others, like my parents who died beautiful deaths, would want palliative care but not useless care once life was ending. This has never been a partisan issue. The patient self-determination act, an earlier version of this legislation, was signed into law by the first President Bush, and one of the main proponents of end-of-life counseling has been Johnny Isakson, a Georgia Republican.

But then, through a path carefully outlined in this morning's Times, the whole thing went viral. Ultra-conservative opponents of reform seized on the section and twisted it from voluntary counseling, to mandatory counseling, and then to death panels. All of this, of course, has nothing to do with the reality of the legislation. Indeed, unless one credits Betsy McCaughey and others who got this started with remarkable carelessness in reading the legislation, one must accept the fact that they were simply lying. Unfortunately, the failure of the mainstream media to respond forcefully to refute earlier half-truths about the legislation (like claims that it could result in rationing), set the stage for blatant falsehoods to be spread with impunity. See Dean Baker's post.

Anyway, just a few more twists and turns and distortions and we have Obama killing Sarah Palin's baby. I suppose that if a political career can be built on outright lies about facts as to which the truth is easily verifiable because the lies resonate with an ideological base, Palin is building her career. Others have come to leadership in other countries along such paths. I would hope that it is still not possible to build a political career in this way in the United States.

Palin is helping her future in conservative circles, it does not advance her political future as a national leader. Her liabilities are huge and they have been revealed on the campaign trail. But in the long run, the politics of pure distortion is not the way to advance a productive national career. With some perspective, this will just fit with the kind of politics that she promoted in 2008, which voters firmly rejected in ballot box.

There is no doubt that she hurts her political future by engaging in and promulgating what has been one of the most egregious misconceptions and in this case, outright lies about the provisions in any of the health care bills. This demonstrates that either she is not very well-informed and just chose to echo a favorite of the lunatic fringe or she knows very well there is no such thing in any bill but that is an easy "line" that fans the flames of an already overheated but non-productive debate.

It was also a huge blow to Palin when one of her state's own senators, Lisa Murkowski, chastised the effort to instill fear in the American public with talk of death panels, when what we needed was serious debate from those who shoulder the responsibility to move the dialog forward for the benefit of the American people.

Sarah Palin will never be taken seriously and be allowed to sit at serious adults table until she starts acting like one.

That is an easy one. The sanctity of life and the dignity and worth of the individual, which underlie the importance of the individual's freedom to decide whether to employ extreme measures to prolong life, are at the core of Western civilization's most precious values, culturally and religiously, and they resonate strongly in America. In a contest between Sarah Palin, defender of liberty and the dignity of the individual, and Barack Obama, defender of Big Brother's need to control health care, Palin wins hands down. That is why Congress was forced to back off this issue so quickly. The Democrats will continue self-destructing with missteps on health care and other policies. This is not just a matter of tactical errors, but reflects a deeper problem -- they have become the party that is willing to sacrifice principles, including the preservation of freedom itself, in the name of whatever policy objective is being touted as the flavor of the month. Gone is the day when Americans could look to the Pat Moynihans and Joe Liebermans of the Democrat party to constrain its overweening ambitions. The Democrats have become a party run by arrogant, pushy know-it-alls who care little for the rights of others -- people like Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and Al Gore and Barack Obama -- and that is not wearing well with the American people, which means it won't last forever.

My 84-year-old mother died alone, in an ambulance, on the way from the nursing home to the hospital, because her doctor wasn’t paying attention to her wishes, and the wishes of our family, in regard to end of life care. Her dignity and worth were stripped from her by a system that routinely mishandles end-of-life care for the elderly and terminally ill. Years later I still burn with anger over this incident. Encouraging patients and doctors to candidly discuss end of life care is incredibly important, and the cartooning and politicizing of this issue by Sarah Palin and others on the right is deeply offensive and, I might add, really sad. Sarah Palin is not defending the dignity of the individual. If successful in killing this provision, she will undoubtedly consign many individuals to the unwanted fate of dying in a hospital room, intubed and in pain, when they would rather do so in their own home. Shame on her and all those who purposely misconstrue this aspect of health care reform to score cheap points.

Sarah Palin is not engaging the Obama Administration in the debate over end-of-life care. She is doing what she calls "making things up."

It might help her career if she could take part in a serious debate on end-of-life care. As far as what she's doing, since most of the people who report the news apparently can't tell the difference between taking part in a real debate and fabricating nonsense, it probably does help her career.

Kristy Patullo (guest)
RI:

When I first read Sarah Palin's statement about "death panels", I knew it would be controversial. What I didn't know at the time is how effective it would be. Sarah speaks from the heart, and that is what is connecting with the citizens of this country. She may use colorful language, but that is what is required to cut through all the dull health care rhetoric. She wasn't the first one to talk about the end of life provision in this legislation, but it was her comments that made the most impact. She's not only helping her political future, but she's preserving our democracy.

Lee (MMBJack) McCarty (guest)
NV:

Timothy Stoltzfus Jost and Dean Baker as the top two and David Biespiel in an excellent commentary, and Mr. Fiedler I felt as hitting a great target about the MSM continual repetition of the "Big Lie" by Sarah Palin. Remember Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf? While I have not read his inflammatory book preceding his Dictatorship that murdered or caused the killing of tens of millions of people in World War II - what he said that stands out in all of my years from early teens to this very day (Ala Palin and the Press hunger for her as a media star if not a serious person with a real opinion) is this scary statement I remember in it's meaning: If you tell a Big Lie big enough and often enough - keep repeating it over and over - then enough people will believe it no matter how "Big The Lie". MSM please, you are torpedoing the one program put off all this and the prior century that is absolutely truly essential for Americans - The Public Option. How many times these lies: "Death Panels", and "Pulling the Plug on Grandmother"? It works Sarah, and too many newscasters are perpetuating and prolonging this travesty and so dangerous for the future of all Americans.

Jonathan Wolfman (guest)
MD:

LEE...you're making two assumptions that just can't coexist. First you're saying that a public option will for sure ruin private insurers by squeezing them out of the market, if not now, soon. Yet there's no evidence for that assumption. The evidence that does exist, frankly, suggests the opposite: Medicare has both public and private aspects to it and its dominant public nature has never driven out those private insurers who compete within it. In the same breath you're saying that a public option will serve few, if anyone's, interests. If we have Medicare as at least a rough guide, no one is suggesting that it offers poor access or substandard care. You can't have it both ways.

Linda Conley (guest)
OR:

For those of you frantically reducing Palin and the rest of the town hallers to simply, the angry lunatic fringe/mob, allow me this brief quote from Jonah Goldberg's latest article, within which Goldberg quotes the Boss himself, President Obama: "Despite his professed outrage over charges of “death panels” and whatnot, Obama admits this. In an interview with the New York Times last spring, he acknowledged that oldsters are a “huge driver of cost.” The “chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health-care bill out here,” Obama explained. Which is why he advocated an advisory panel of experts to offer “guidance” on end-of-life care and costs. But don’t you dare call it a “death panel.” " For the academic left who likely prides itself on its ability for close reading and thorough research, I'd say their study habits and reading choices are grossly selective and glossed over with an ever alert partisan eye.

ann seymour (guest)
CA:

The basic problem is that most Americans do not fully understand how devastatingly costly medical care is now. We cannnot afford it, and the system MUST change. Otherwise, all the stimulus packages in the world won't keep our economy from going down. My husband, a neurosurgeon, agrees. - Ann Seymour, author of "I've Always Loved You."

Harvey Karlin (guest)
SC:

How can you kill something that is already dead? I’m afraid her political career is over and that’s a good thing. Her career is the first causality of the death panel. Sarah Palin embodies everything that is wrong with this country’s politics. She certainly does not excel in anything academic, or intellectual. She possesses none of the prerequisites that one needs to have to run for President. She is a vivid example of what our educational system lacks. So if America is seeking mediocrity Sarah Palin surely fits the bill.

Jayne Morgan (guest)
TN:

I am sick and tired of willful stupidity, or worse yet, cynical appeals to our fears.
I am sick and tired of health care being treated as a political football.
I am sick and tired of discussions like this one, in which the facts of the matter are far less important than who currently has possession and whether they're apt to score.

Andrea Hitt (guest)
CT:

No kernel truth that end of life planning involves government intervention in these decisions - not in the bill, not happening today as practiced, not feasible. Simply begins to pay physicians for what they have always done - usually at 3 AM in a hospital, with a dying patient and bereaved family trying to honor a patient's wish for dignity, freedom from pain, peace in death. Many of us already have Advanced Directives/Living Wills because we want to direct our own care in our final days and hours. The planning option lets the patient decide what measures to choose, which treatments to decline. It encourages knowledge and thoughtful consideration. Palin has aligned herself with the Bureaucratic Elite of Private Insurance and Wall Street - posing as a populist, when in fact she aids the coporations' last stand against a public option which could boost wages, end insurance benefit slavery, and provide healthcare security for all Americans.

Chris Sells (guest)
AL:

Whether or not this is helping or hurting her political future is too early to tell. What I will say is that I find it very interesting that the "Arena Players" who have all these long winded titles as professors, strategists, attorneys etc all have missed something important. Since Palin's statement and then rebuttal about "death panels" the Senate dropped the end of life from the bill. So there must have been something in the language that she was correct about in order for them to remove the section. Her voice must still carry some political weight and that bothers her opponents. Otherwise opponents would just be quite.

Kettle stanton (guest)
IL:

This is bad politics in the makeing....comments like these are so far from the truth...Sarah Palin is so wrong on this one.......and then you want her to run for President, its not the first time she put her foot in her mouth...she belongs on the Hockey Team not in politics....forget it...

carol stanton (guest)
IL:

Sara Palin is a poor excuse for a politician...she belongs in the gossip columns..
she should think what she is saying before she makes remarkds...she has no cooth, do you really think she would be a good President. I think you would be sorry for having backed her. NO in my books

Kenneth Wills (guest)
TX:

In 2008, Sarah Palin promoted "Health Care Decisions Day." Health Care Decisions Day was a government promted progam that Palin described as "WHEREAS, Healthcare Decisions Day is designed to raise public awareness of the need to plan ahead for healthcare decisions, related to end of life care and medical decision-making whenever patients are unable to speak for themselves and to encourage the specific use of advance directives to communicate these important healthcare decisions. " End Quote. Whereas, Sarah Palin supports/ is in favor of "death panels."

Lee Olyer (guest)
CO:

In response to Jonathan Wolfman: When all the other Options are run out of the game - What kind of Options are you truly left with? My insurance provider needs to turn a profit and attract more customers to stay in business - Medicare and Medicaid do not. The supposed "competition to drive down costs" will be a very one-sided and short-lived affair. Kind of like putting the Steelers in the Pittsburgh Public School League to instill more "competition". Great for the Steelers! - bad for everyone else. If Congress is proposing the same Option they enjoy to the nation then why is the bill 1000 pages long and what's the rush?

David Mueller (guest)
CA:

Death Panels an exaggeration? Mr. Steckler and Mr. Davis seem to have a great deal of trust in consensus- based organizations. Is the Supreme Court consensus based? No, each Justice votes and prepares an opinion, but it is the count of the vote that is final.
When Sarah Palin calls "consensus-based organizations "death panels", she identifies the precise problem with the language to begin with. It can be any combination of adjectives you can conjure. Just what is a consensus-based organization in Sec. 1233 of the bill? It is so vague that it can mean anything people in the future want it to mean. Will the organization be headed by Rahm Emanuel's brother Ezekiel? He has written his opinions and made the "useless eater" arguments very real for most of us that value life.
The government continues to box my beliefs up and send them to cold storage. I oppose abortion, but a consensus-based organization has made it legal. This legislation may take my tax dollars to pay for it now. Prayer is banned in public settings by government rule. I have a right to the pursuit of happiness in this country- as long as consensus-based organizations don't take it away from me.

Linda Conley (guest)
OR:

Last I checked with the liberals and their media, Palin is irrelevant, a bimbo air-head. How can she be thought to be in possession of a political future, as the wise academic left wrote her off moments after she stepped off the Convention Stage last summer? But that's the left's continued game plan: make the opposition look not only irrelevant, but plain stupid. It's an old, boring story and tactic suggested as a must-do by the radical, Saul Alinsky : ridicule the opposition and put it on the defensive, removed from the central issues at hand; this week, it's a Government run health care system. Mock Palin and her death panel ideas; recall Reagan, repeatedly for years, regarded as a buffoon; the number of cheap adjectives employed by the far left to belittle President George W Bush remain innumerable -- what we had left in the media was a mere left-wing caricature of Bush. The left, however, can never really leave alone those they despise the most and find irrelevant, to include this day the entire Republican party, whom they continue to point to as impotent and so yesterday. The facts, however, are always the truth in the end, not cheap ridicule. So, carry on! The common folk in the end prove the wiser.

Jonathan Wolfman (guest)
MD:

To Lee Olyer: When will you acknowledge that no one, absolutely no one, under any provision of any health care proposal, will have to be served by a public health insurance alternative? That is what "option" means. The plans that Mr. Obama and Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi all have now (and the one that Ms. Palin has now) are ALL public plans. Why don't you know that?

Patrick Northway (guest)
IN:

"In a contest between Sarah Palin, defender of liberty and the dignity of the individual, and Barack Obama, defender of Big Brother's need to control health care..." Charles W. Calomiris
Mr. Calomiris' posted statement has, as is typical for a conservative, everything to do with politics and the Democrats and nothing to do with the Health Care "debate"- and this guy is, supposedly, a professor! This is what the overall "debate" right now is about- are we going to deal with issues and challenges FACTUALLY and RATIONALLY or are we going to politicize issues with endless "code words" - right, left, socialist, commie, defender of liberty, insinuations, outright lies and misleading accusations? Are we going to discuss the issues or shout down the opposing point of view? The outcome is critical- are we going to promote addressing issues- very, very serious issues involving lots of money and lots of lives- through demagoguery and deception? Mr. or Dr. Calomiris- whatever your field of study- is this the lesson you really want to teach? Is this the process, that in your freedom to choose, you DECIDE to use?

Bruce Blevins (guest)
MN:

Charles W. Calamoris has it exactly backwards. He is right about the seriousness of the issue, but either midunderstands the bill, or is choosing to answer a different question. Calling this a "death panel" provision and killing it does nothing to advance liberty or anything else. In fact, the absence of end-of-life counseling can lead to decisions made by Doctors or insurance companies because the patients wishes are not known. As far as Ms. Palin's future and her present posturing, she is burying herself. Everyone expects politicians to lie during campaigns, but this is not an election year, and she is not a candidate. The mountain of lies and distortions in the present context is not welcome, and makes it seem that the Republicans don't care about solving any problems and don't even want to seriously debate the issues. Tea parties, shouters, Birthers, et al, will eventually be seen as a string of roadblocks to progress. That makes them the party of a lousy, unpopular status quo.

Jeff Raleigh (guest)
CA:

Here is what Pres Obama said about panels. What would you call them?
THE PRESIDENT: So that's where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that's also a huge driver of cost, right?
I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.
LEONHARDT: So how do you - how do we deal with it?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that's part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It's not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that's part of what I suspect you'll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.

Paul Eck (guest)
WI:

If Sarah Palin's statement is a lie, as so many of these so-called educated people are saying, then why has the Senate Finance Committee suddenly removed that portion from the bill? Gee I'm no college professor or have a bunch of letters after my name but that says to me that she was on target.
I love the fact that the left calls her a liar, ignorant, or in many cases a buffoon. She uses what so many politicians either don't or won't use and that's called common sense.
Let the media and others think she's unintelligent. They said the same thing about Reagan and he only turned out to arguably be the best president we had during the 1900's.

Daniel Hales (guest)
FL:

What Sarah Palin is insisting is far from a lie. Obama may have hidden the truth with colorful lies but it does not change reality. A socialist run health care program is an impossible task. That is, if you want it be successful and profitable for the people who are paying for it. If you are a wise and intelligent person all you would need to do is reflect on the history of the socialist health care systems. They are failed programs littered with death panels, high taxes, poor treatment, and many other substantial problems. It truly irritates me to know some of America is actually buying into this proposal refusing to acknowledge that is destined for failure. America has truly become ignorant and foolish. Let history speak for itself and you will undestand that what Sarah Palin is testifying is the truth. No matter how you want to color socialist health care the picture is still the same. This is because the foundation is the same. America's Government cannot support the problems they have created now. How is the government, with the tax revenue they receive so low, going to support something of this magnitude? The truth is the government cannot. People of America remember when lies abound reflect on history to determine the truth

Phil Gonzalez (guest)
TX:

The same could be asked of whistle blowers whose jobs aren't political. Are they hurting their chances of getting another job like the one they had or do they have to seek another profession. Whistle blowers are encouraged in the government because they took the risk of exposing something the business wanted keep secret. In this case the government. As time goes on, the people themselves at the town halls are whistle blowers because they are becoming more informed about the government health care and it was due to Palin describing the method in which the seniors were going to be treated. It's not so much in how Palin described the method, but the care less attitude of the contributions the seniors made to this country before they became seniors. No one likes for anyone to treat them as if their life had no meaning. People wait their whole lives for retirement to enjoy the fruit of their labor and when they hear President Obama speak, he takes those dreams away.

Paul Addington (guest)
KY:

It's entertaining as an average american to watch the dem/lib/progressives try to make this about Sarah Palin to divert the discussion from the true debate...the destruction of the most innovative healthcare system in the world. So Dems/libs/progressives (you're all the same regardless of what you call yourself this month) you keep pushing this rock up the hill so I can keep watching it roll back down over top of you. I'm enjoying the show.

William McEnery (guest)
RI:

Because Politico hasn't posted it, unless I missed it. Here is what Sarah Palin had to say about end of life care when she was for it before she was against it...Please one of the Conservative commenters explain this(Oh and Newt Gingrich essentially said the same thing. Had to cut out some due th character restrictions but you can find the fill quote at www.thinkprogress.org. Yeah, go look at it even if you think its just a lefty website. Do not deny yourselves the facts..
WHEREAS, Healthcare Decisions Day is designed to raise public awareness of the need to plan ahead for healthcare decisions, related to end of life care and medical decision-making whenever patients are unable to speak for themselves and to encourage the specific use of advance directives to communicate these important healthcare decisions. [...]
WHEREAS, the Foundation for End of Life Care in Juneau, Alaska, and other organizations throughout the United States have endorsed this event and are committed to educating the public about the importance of discussing healthcare choices and executing advance directives.

Lee Olyer (guest)
CO:

Maria Cardona better check the numbers - there are an awful lot of Americans who take Sarah Palin "seriously" and the numbers only get bigger with every snide comment from the Left. Gov. Palin lays out, in no uncertain terms, what 'controlling costs' in a socialized system really means: denial of service. Every study out there shows that the bulk of an average person's health care costs occur during the last six months of life. Where do you think the budgetary hatchet is going to fall? I think Gov. Palin is being too kind. The elderly won't even get the dignity of a Death Panel; more likely they will get a sympathetic pat on the head, a bottle of aspirin and a counseling session on end of life options. If the public option is so great, then Obama, Pelosi and Ried can be the first three to sign up for it - followed by the rest of Congress and other Federal and State employees. It seems to me that any of the Arena contributors could also come out and commit to sign up for the public option as well. Who wants to go first?

Jonathan Wolfman (guest)
MD:

There is no Western European nation whose public insurance plan includes state-sponsored panels that determine end-of-life family decisions, Ms. Palin's so-called "death panels". More generally, there is no Western European nation whose public insurance plan has resulted in more 'horror stories' than our own exclusively private insurance paradigm has. Britons, Swedes, Canadians, Germans...are not only not dropping like flies, as Ms. Palin and others imply routinely, polls in those places regularly say that citizens there are satisfied with their access to and efficacy of care. In the end, irresponsible statements about grandmothers, health care reformers-as-"Nazis", and willfully ignoring the fact that under every plan at play Americans may keep the private insurers and doctors they have, will all fail. There will be greater competition through some form of a public option and the working-poor and those unable to work will be covered. The nation, despite the perennial August-rhetoric loving hot heads, will win.

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The Arena is a cross-party, cross-discipline forum for intelligent and lively conversation about political and policy issues. Contributors have been selected by POLITICO staff and editors. David Mark, Arena's moderator, is a Senior Editor at POLITICO. Each morning, POLITICO sends a question based on that day's news to all contributors.